flower language
by kacchansass
Summary: Bakugou Katsuki is in love with his best friend. As much as he will deny it, and scream that he hates Midoriya Izuku from the top of his lungs, the proof is in the petals that bloom in his lungs. And there's nothing he can do about it. Katsuki/Izuku slow burn & canon compliant.
1. purple lilacs

Katsuki doesn't remember when he started to feel the way he does about his best friend Izuku. He doesn't remember when the achingly blinding smiles sent butterflies to his stomach. He doesn't remember when he started longing to hold Izuku's hand in his own, now until forever. He doesn't remember when green became his favorite color over orange. He just knows they're a staple of his life now.

Katsuki coughs wetly, droplets of blood covering his All Might bedsheets. He shimmies free of his blankets and hops down to the floor, running to the bathroom as fast as his tiny legs can carry him. He barely makes it to the toilet in time before he's coughing up a wave of gritty bile and blood.

Katsuki blanches from the cottony, almost floral taste in his mouth. He spits and spits until he feels something dislodge from the back of his tongue: there, atop the disgusting soup of his stomach contents, is a single purple flower.

That same cotton feeling starts up again, but this time when he spits it's only petals. Katsuki plucks one that managed to hit the floor instead of the bowl so he could take it to his parents.

He's not sure what's happening to him, but he knows it's bad. He doesn't want to die.

"M-Mommy!" Katsuki cries as he runs to her side of the bed. She grumbles and turns the bedside light on before sitting up, worry furrowing her brows.

"What's wrong, Katsuki?" Mitsuki asks, reaching a hand out to wipe away the sticky tears that stain his face.

"I-I threw up, a-and these came out!" He snivels, outstretching his palm so his mother could see the delicate purple petal stained with blood.

The instant her eyes process what he's holding, Mitsuki's shaking her husband to wake up.

"Oh, Katsuki baby." She coos, swinging her legs over the side of the bed so she could lean and give him a hug. Katsuki eagerly buries his head in his mother's soft stomach, muffling his sobs.

He feels that same cottony prickling in the back of his throat again, and _it hurts._

His mother gently takes the petal from his hand and hands it over to Masaru when he sits up. Katsuki sniffles as he's picked up and cradled against his mother's chest, already feeling more at ease as he listens to her heartbeat. She carries him down the stairs and to the car in their garage, setting him down in his booster seat.

Mitsuki straps him in tight before sliding into the seat next to him. It's odd not seeing his mother take the front seat, but he thinks little of it.

"Where are we going?" Katsuki asks, throat starting to itch again.

"We have to take you to the hospital, sweetie. They're gonna make you all better." His mother replies, a small and shaky smile stretching her face, eyes glazed over with unshed tears.

Katsuki knows the look well—it's the same one Izuku has when he's obviously upset but pretending not to be.

"Oh." He says, fiddling with the strap of his booster. He's never been fond of doctors. "Can I go see Izuku tomorrow? He has a new All Might action figure, and he promised me we could play with it together."

"We'll see, honey." His mother is quick to answer, this time not bothering to look over her shoulder. Katsuki can hear the wobble in her voice, and he knows her tears have finally fallen.

Why she cries, he doesn't know.

Katsuki squirms in his mother's arms as she pulls him out of the backseat when they reach the hospital. He hates how empty the parking lot is and how scary the lights of the sterile waiting room are as they cast an eerie glow onto the concrete sidewalk. Mitsuki rubs soothing circles into his back as he hides his face in her shoulder so he doesn't have to see the hospital anymore.

He whines when his mother finally sets him down in a hospital bed. The room is painted with stupid children's cartoon characters that feel fake to him, like they were trying too hard to comfort people that were dying.

Was he dying? He's not sure, but he knows he _feels _like it.

Katsuki yelps when a nurse sticks a needle in the top of his hand. She tells him it's an I.V. line to give his body water, but he doesn't trust her fake smile. Why would they give him water through a needle when he could drink it from a cup?

He drifts off to sleep shortly after to the white noise of his parents discussing something with the same nurse. The last thing he sees before his eyes close is his father hand over the flower petal he'd coughed up.

When he wakes again, he's in a different room. He can tell by the different paintings on the wall. His throat no longer feels itchy and cottony, but his mouth feels like he hasn't had water in days. His chest burns, and when he looks down he sees a large cut that was sewn shut.

Katsuki blinks a few times as his vision refocuses on his mother and father standing by the side of his bed. They both look like they've been crying for hours.

"M-Mom?" He mumbles, voice hoarse and cracking as if he'd gargled nails.

Katsuki grits his teeth as pain flares up in his chest around where the stitches are. He wants to scratch at them to make the pain go away, but his body feels too numb to move. He looks up at his parents for an explanation as to what happened, but all he gets are two pity smiles.

"We had to cancel your play date with Izuku, sweetie. I'm sorry." His mother says, gently brushing his hair down with her fingers so it looked like less of a rat's nest.

The name feels familiar, like a word on the tip of his tongue he can't quite remember. His head spins as he fights to remember where he's heard the name before but gives up after a few moments.

He looks up at his mother in confusion, hoping she could provide some sort of answer to the question he's sure once meant so much to him.

"Who's Izuku?"


	2. cyclamen

Katsuki returns to class a few days later as if nothing happened. All the kids ask him questions about where he was, but he doesn't answer them. Sensei eventually steps in to tell the other vultures of his class to give him some space, that he'd talk when he's ready, but he doesn't want to talk about what happened. He barely even knows _himself _what happened, how could he tell someone else about it?!

Katsuki sits alone in the corner of the room coloring in a page of a Pokémon coloring book with some crayons when he feels something tingly in his palms. He drops the crayon back into the crayon bin resting on his table and pushes the coloring book away so he wouldn't ruin his hard work incase something was wrong.

Katsuki stares at his hands as if they held the answer to life itself, clenching and unclenching his pudgy fingers as the tingly, itchy feeling built up in his palms. It's weird, but it doesn't hurt like his throat did. He whines when the static-y feeling finally reaches an almost painful crescendo, flinching when a tiny _boom _goes off in his hand. The background chatter of the class comes to a halt from his unintended interruption.

Katsuki releases a second crackle from his other palm, wide smile spreading across his cheeks. His quirk finally manifested! Sucks it had to be in class, but that's fine. It just means all the attention gets to be on him for a bit. Sensei is the first one to react, kneeling next to his chair.

"Are you okay, Bakugou-chan?" She asks. The hair not pulled back into her neat bun covers her warm hazelnut eyes.

Katsuki nods his reply, accompanied by a few small sparks in both his palms. "I got my quirk!"

"That's wonderful, Bakugou-chan! You have a very flashy quirk. I'm sure you'll be an amazing hero." Sensei says, ruffling his hair with a soft smile.

The class seems to gather around him at that point, suffocating him with their closeness and never ending questions. He sets off crackles in his hands to give them their one and only show of his power.

"I got my quirk, and now you've all seen it. Leave me alone!" Katsuki growls at the crowd, baring his teeth to anyone that gets too close to him. The teacher, thankfully, steps in and helps disperse everyone back to their tables to finish their arts and crafts before nap time.

Unfortunately, one straggler was left standing next to him. The green haired freckled kid pulls up a chair to sit next to him, bright green eyes wide in wonder. Katsuki feels his cheeks heat up at their intensity and has to look away.

"K-Kacchan, that's amazing!" The kid says, holding out his hand as if expecting Katsuki to hand his over.

He shies away from the weirdo with minor disgust. As much as he wants to push this kid away and tell him to get lost, he doesn't want to get in trouble with the teacher on his first day back. The new All Might game was being released this weekend, and getting in trouble meant getting grounded, which meant no play time. So instead he sucks up his discomfort with a scowl.

"Your quirk is so cool! Can you do it again?" Greenhead—he now calls the kid—asks, eyes lit bright green in pure wonder and awe.

He really has nothing to lose by showing off his cool new power one more time, Katsuki thinks with a shrug, lifting his hands from the table and letting loose a few sparks in each palm. The other kid is quick to grab both his hands without warning, eyes somehow getting larger as a tiny squeal leaves his lips.

The kid looks back up at him, awe replaced with determination. "When I get my quirk, we're gonna be the coolest heroes _ever! _They'll call us the _Wonder Duo, _and we'll be famous!"

Katsuki gives the kid a weak, pity smile that the other seems blissfully unaware of, instead plunging into a discussion about All Might. He loses himself in talking about his favorite hero, shoving the weird churn of his gut that he should stay away from this kid at all costs to the back of his mind.

It comes as no surprise to Katsuki when Midoriya turns out to be diagnosed quirkless only a few days later. His mother had taken him to a doctor to have it confirmed. Izuku being quirkless meant that the over-enthusiastic kid would stay away from him, and that meant the weird feeling in him wouldn't come back.

But Midoriya _never _shied away from him after the diagnosis. If anything, he became _more _determined to stay by his side.

And Katsuki _hates him _for it.

He picks up the pail that Midoriya had brought with him to their neighborhood park, pointing at the kanji that spells out the kid's name. "This one can be read as Deku."

"Wow, Kacchan! You can read kanji?" One of his lackies gawks, and Katsuki absolutely _preens _at the feeling of being superior to them.

"And you can't?" He scoffs, smirking down at where Midoriya was still sat in the sand. The kid stands the second attention is placed on him.

"What does Deku mean?" His other follower asks.

Katsuki's smirk turns dark as he stares down Midoriya, who stares up at him as if he hung the moon himself. "It means someone that can't do anything. Useless."

The way Midoriya's—no, _Deku's— _face falls as if he'd been hit by a whip when he hears the insult is almost enough to make him regret what he said. But the weird feeling he gets whenever he sees Deku isn't there anymore.

"S-Stop it, Kacchan…" Deku murmurs, face downcast as his eyes glue themselves to the sand beneath his feet.

Katsuki doesn't waste another second of their time on something as stupid as Deku's grovelling. They don't have much more time to play before their parents came to collect them, after all.

* * *

He's six years old now and king of the school. He's got his two sidekicks that do whatever he says, and he's got the whole school wrapped around his finger. He's got a brilliant quirk and is destined for greatness—and everyone knows it. They all practically worship the ground he walks on and make space for him as he walks the halls with his head held high. All except for one:

_Deku._

The girls in their grade have been talking about him. They think he's cute with his chipmunk cheeks and splatters of freckles. They like the way he's easily flustered and turned into a blushing, stuttering mess. They like how skittish he is, how sensitive he is—even though he's quirkless.

Katsuki thinks they're crazy.

He looks at Deku, and all he sees is a weak, scrawny nerd that couldn't defend himself from a papercut with delusions of being a hero. He sees someone so utterly beneath him that it angers him whenever Deku says they could stand together in combat. He looks at him, and his head starts yelling at him to _stay away._

And _god _does he try to stay away. He's done everything—he's yelled, he's kicked, he's punched, he's screamed, he's nearly blown the runt up—and yet Deku _always _keeps coming back.

And he hates it.

He hates the way Deku is always trailing behind him no matter how many times he tells him not to. He hates the way Deku still has a shine to his eyes when he talks about his hero costume or about how he'll become top hero. He hates that Deku hasn't already realised he'll get himself killed being a quirkless hero.

But what he hates most of all is that he actually _cares _about the pebble. He hates the churn of his gut when he thinks about Deku being hurt by someone other than him, and he hates the fact that a teeny tiny part of him feels content with the idea of having Deku by his side for the rest of his life, even though he's a useless, quirkless little _nobody. _Katsuki growls as his sparking palm collides with Deku's soft freckled cheek. The boy falls to the floor with a whimper, tears already falling from his eyes.

Yet still he scrambles to his hands to stand again. Still he stands on shaky legs, hands held in weak fists in front of him. He stands between the kid Katsuki was originally going after for getting in his way, and it's _irritating _that the little quirkless nobody thinks he could _actually _stand up to someone as amazing as him.

"I-If you keep doing this, I'll—I'll never forgive you!" Deku shouts, voice wobbling as though his heart were in pain and not his body.

As if a threat like that meant anything to him when he's barely known the kid for two years.

Katsuki slams his hand into his palm with another explosion, casting his prey a fake, predatory smile. He wants to pound Deku's stupid face into the ground for making him feel this way—so he does. He doesn't punch hard enough to leave bad bruises or marks, just enough to let Deku know his place and relieve some of the anger brewing within him.

The churn of his gut when he's near Deku begs him to leave the kid be, to put as much distance between them as he can—but Katsuki doesn't plan on running from Deku. No, he was going to make Deku run from _him._

He wasn't the quirkless loser, after all.

* * *

At age eight, Katsuki learns what it means to have a crush. He doesn't have one himself—but some of the nobodies that follow him do. They talk at length about the girls they like and stumble over their words from embarrassment when teased about it.

Katsuki couldn't care less about his classmates. All they're good for is being the background characters in his hero origin story. He won't remember their names and only vaguely remember them when they talk about being friends with him in elementary school during interviews about the Number One Hero _Bakugou Katsuki._

That's what he tells himself.

He doesn't need anyone else because he's got everything he needs already, and that's enough, isn't it? Still, part of him longs for a friend that won't flake on him the second some better offer to hang out with comes along—longs for friends that won't talk to him about things that don't matter like crushes or gossip. He wants a friend that wants to be a hero just as badly as he does, someone that understands the satisfying burn in his veins when he practices his quirk on dummies in his backyard.

But the only person in his school with a drive to directly parallel his own is Deku. Quirkless loser _Deku._

Katsuki doesn't understand why he hasn't given up on his idiotic dream of being a hero. He has no quirk—but in truth, that's not what pisses him off about the kid the most. It's the way the idiot keeps bouncing back to him hit after hit after hit. The way all the insults and attempts to crush his dream never seem to put a damper on it.

He hates him. He hates Deku for making him go to such length to prevent him from entering the hero world. He hates Deku for making _something _in him ache everytime he looks at him, as if he's missing something important that's not there. He hates Deku for making him feel such chaos within himself.

For a brief moment, Katsuki entertains the idea that the mixture of feelings might be this "crush" thing his friends were talking about, but dismisses it as quickly as it came.

Deku was useless. Deku was annoying and weak. Deku made him feel like he should keep twenty feet between them at all times, which was _far _from butterflies in the stomach feeling everyone kept describing.

Wasn't it?

That afternoon, he destroys nearly all of his training dummies and has to request new ones from his father.

* * *

Katsuki's ten when his parents finally sit down and explain why most of the memories from his childhood before the age of five are foggy, as if he'd dreamt them.

"You contracted a disease called Hanahaki." His mother says softly.

Katsuki crosses his arms over his chest in a display of indifference. He actually _really wants _to know what had happened to him so long ago and gave him his chest scar, but he sure as hell didn't have to wear his curiosity on his sleeve like Deku. "So what?"

"It makes flowers bloom in your lungs. There are only a few ways to cure Hanahaki, and you were only four years old at the time. We did what we thought was best for you." His father adds, only adding to Katsuki's curiosity.

"What do you mean?" He asks, looking between his parents.

His mother shifts a bit uncomfortably in her chair before answering his question. "One of the cures involves removing the flowers from your lungs through surgery, but you lose a lot of memories from it."

"Oh." Katsuki says, curling into himself a bit. He asks nothing more, deciding instead he'd find the answers he wants on his own without the stupid parental filter.

That night, Katsuki sneaks into his father's study and googles the word "hanahaki". He clicks on the first search result that comes up. It's some fancy looking medical website, so he figures he could trust what it says about the disease.

_Hanahaki Disease, also known as "Lover's Calling", is a rare disease in which flowers bloom within the lungs of those affected. The cause of the disease is from unrequited love _—

Katsuki furrows his brows as he opens up a new tab and googles "unrequited".

_(of a feeling, especially love) not returned or rewarded._

Love not returned? That's dumb. He was a four year old, how could he have fallen in love with someone? That's what adults did, not kids.

He clicks back to his original search tab and scrolls further down to see if there are exceptions to how the disease is formed.

_There have been no documented cases of the disease appearing in those that are quirkless, so it is highly speculated that only those possessing quirks can contract the disease. More recent studies of the rare few affected by the disease seem to suggest that beyond having feelings of unrequited love, the person contracting the disease and the person they feel such feelings for, must have a strong emotional connection both ways._

How was it possible he'd had such a strong connection to someone when he was four that he'd developed a disease _based around love._

Katsuki shakes his head in mild confusion, scrolling down to see if there are any answers to the many, many questions he still had.

_There are currently only three known methods to treating Hanahaki Disease. The first treatment is by having the original unrequited love become requited. The second is for the person affected to fall out of love. The third, and most popular treatment option, is for the removal of the flowers via surgery; however, this option comes with the side effect of losing memories of the person that one who contracted the disease was in love with._

Katsuki closes out the tab and shuts the computer down after that. He had a lot to ponder over while he slept.

* * *

After that, he starts hearing about Hanahaki from everyone. Did they all know what happened to him? Or was he just now starting to pick out the term more often since he spoke with his parents?

The girls of his class think the disease is poetic and romantic; the boys gag at the thought of something so cheesy.

None of them actually believe the disease exists. They see it on the same page as soulmates—something unique to think about but couldn't actually exist. How would a disease even when one person was in love and the other wasn't?

Katsuki sketches a bundle of flowers in the corner of his notes. Somehow, he can't help but feel like everyone was looking down on him for being foolish enough to fall in love at such a young age.

* * *

Katsuki's eleven when health problems start to form from his early onset Hanahaki. He has trouble regulating his breathing sometimes and chest pains are a common friend to him now. His throat burns sometimes for no reason. It's scarring of the inner lung walls or something—Katsuki wasn't really paying attention to what the doctor had said.

But he doesn't let it stop him from his goal of being the best hero ever.

If there's one thing he was never short on, it was determination. He fought with every ounce of strength he had to condition his body and push his limits, to heave and choke on strangled breaths as his throat burned like it had been personally hand delivered to him from hell itself. He gains scars on his palms from overusing his quirk and testing the limits of what he can do.

Katsuki rolls his eyes whenever his parents tell him to ease up on his training and that he needs to think of his health first. He spits venom and throws punches whenever Deku comes to him with the same concerns. He lies when the other kids ask about the scar on his chest in the locker room when he changes for gym. It was none of their business anyway.

Keeping others away was the norm for him now. Spew hatred and vitriol until people stopped trying to get close to him. People gave him a wide berth when he walked the halls, yet they still held respect for him. He had the power and potential to become the best, and they all looked up to him.

Except Deku.

Quirkless, scrawny little Deku that keeps loudly announcing his love for pro heroes and mumbling under his breath as he scribbles in his hero analysis notebooks while he sits alone in the lunchroom. Timid little Deku who's done_nothing _—no hero training or even basic body toning whatsoever—that has the nerve to look him in the eye and say he's able to stand in the same ring as Bakugou Katsuki.

He's spent _years _honing his potential, and he knows he still has a long way to go—yet this quirkless runt thinks he can just waltz his way into being a hero? Yeah fucking right.

Katsuki snaps the pencil in his hand without realizing he'd been bending it. A pencil is passed to him over his shoulder. He turns to glare at Deku over his shoulder, smacking the offered writing utensil away from him.

When would Deku finally take the hint he didn't want him? When would he finally take the hint that he couldn't be a hero without a quirk, without putting in the work required to meet the bare minimum?

_Why can't he just let _**_me_ **_be his hero _—

Katsuki slams his hands on his desk the second the thought crosses his mind and stands. He leaves the class without another word, despite the protests of his sensei to sit back down. He can feel the stares on his back as he walks away, but none of them burn as deeply as the one that's undoubtedly coming from Deku.

The burning of his chest flares up again as he thinks of the green eyes and freckles that piss him off so much. He writes everything off as food poisoning, a fever—_ anything _to bury the idea that he actually wanted to be Deku's hero, that maybe he felt something other than blinding hatred for the quirkless loser.

This feeling would pass. Tomorrow he'd wake up, and the feeling would be gone. He'd go back to the way he was after some rest.

Maybe he _was _overdoing his hero training.

* * *

Katsuki's twelve when he finds himself standing in the park near his house in the middle of the night staring up at the stars that litter the sky like glitter. He grits his teeth until they feel like cracking and balls his hands into fists until his nails threaten to break the skin of his palms. Tears blur his vision and his breaths come in hard as he fights to keep them in.

He screams absently into the night when he can't hold everything in any longer. Things shouldn't have been this way. He was _better than this. _Katsuki wipes the tears away from his cheeks as he screams again, choking back a pathetic sob. Of all the people in the world for him to have a crush on, _why _did it have to be the stupid, quirkless _Deku._


	3. petunia

Katsuki sits with his feet propped up against his desk, head tipped back with his eyes closed. He doesn't give a shit about what his sensei is droning on about—something useless about future high schools or some shit.

He grits his teeth as sensei dismisses their career counselling with the simple fact that everyone wants to apply to some sort of hero program, resulting in the class erupting into cheers that ring in his ears like nails on a chalkboard. Why are the extras always so goddamn loud? He hates always having to scream over them when he talks.

"Sensei, don't compare me to these extras as if I had anything like their crappy quirks." Katsuki yells over the class chatter, hands finally dropping from where they were folded behind his head to drape over the back of his chair. He smirks when they respond with different jabs about his ego—but when you had a quirk like his, and the skill to use it—you had a right to be full of yourself, in his opinion.

"Shut up! Extras should act like extras!" He shouts to the faceless horde of the class, cocky grin threatening to actually swallow his face. He just can't help himself—it was too easy to rile up the nobodies by pointing out the truth to them.

"Ah, Bakugou. You, of course, must be aiming Yuuei." His sensei says.

Easy as it was to rile up the nobodies, it was even _easier _to find entertainment in it.

"Ah, the stupid chattering of extras!" Katsuki growls as he hops up from his seat and lands atop his desk with a loud bang, bringing the scattered whispers of his classmates to a halt. "I aced the mock exam! I'm the only one here with the stuff for Yuuei!"

"I'll surpass even All Might and become the best hero there ever was!" He yells, hands outstretched before him in what might be his future hero pose. "Not to mention I'll be one of the richest people in the world!"

"Oh, you're also going for Yuuei, aren't you, Midoriya?"

And just like that, the illusion shatters. The extras fall into a deathly silence for a few moments before breaking out into a high-pitched laughter that grates on Katsuki's last nerve. The final straw is Deku's vehement defense that his second in class standing alone will allow him into Yuuei—as if no _other _work or training was required for the quirkless runt to become a hero. As if all the training Katsuki did _didn't matter _because _good grades alone _could make a hero.

"Come_ on, _Deku!" Katsuki hisses, smacking his palm down in the center of Deku's desk with an explosion that has the nerd flying backwards to avoid the fallout of.

"Forget the shitty quirks—_ you're totally quirkless. _You think you can rub shoulders with me?!" He yells down at him, hands twitching in an eagerness to hit the idiot with another burst of explosions until he finally learns his fucking place in this world.

"Wa—Wait, no, Kacchan. I wasn't saying I could compete with you! Not at all!" Deku stumbles over his words, skittering backwards away from him until his back collides with the wall.

"It's just...been my dream since I was little—"

He knows.

"—and well...there's no harm in trying."

Katsuki grits his teeth into a snarl. Did Deku really think he could be a hero just by _trying? _That he was somehow so much _better _than someone that's put everything into training to be a hero that he could just _try _and _somehow_come out on top?! Just how far up his own ass _was _Deku?

"_ Try? _Try _what? _The entrance exam? You're taking the exam just to _try? _" Katsuki hisses, sparks crackling in both his palms in fury. "What can you even _do? _"

"Alright, everyone sit back down so I can continue the lesson." Sensei cuts in from his desk at the front of the class. He keeps his gaze on the quirkless runt until everyone else is back in their seats before returning to his own.

Stupid, shitty Deku _still _thinks he can be a hero just by _trying. _If that was true, does that make Katsuki an idiot for pushing himself so hard to be in top shape with finite control of his quirk?

No—because it's not true. Simple as that.

Deku was just a delusional idiot that _still _hasn't learned where his place in society is.

Katsuki's still simmering with anger when the class is dismissed for the day. His fingers twitch by his sides as he watches Deku scroll through his phone and mutter something he'd seen before class. How was he going to get it through the nerd's thick skull that he could _never _be a hero, let alone compete with him?

Katsuki scans over Deku's items before he spots his holy grail: Deku's Hero Analysis notebook. If he destroyed that, it'd surely be a big enough message to stay the fuck away.

"We're not done here, Deku." Katsuki hisses, snatching the notebook off the desk before Deku could stop him and taunts him with it as his usual followers laugh at some stupid nonsense he couldn't care less about. He holds the book between his hands, releasing two explosions to burn what he could and ignoring Deku's pleas to give it back.

"The best heroes out there showed signs of greatness, even as students." Katsuki says nonchalantly as he tosses the charred garbage over his shoulder and out the window. "I'll be the first and _only _hero from this crappy public middle school, _and _the first to win the honor of becoming a student at Yuuei. Guess I'm just a perfectionist."

Katsuki shrugs off the comments his followers make, focused entirely on Deku as he puts his hand on the nerd's shoulder. He heats his palms to smoking without causing an explosion to burn a hole into Deku's uniform to get his point across.

"In other words, don't you _dare _get into Yuuei, nerd." Katsuki says with a predatory smile, shoving Deku away as if _he'd _burned him and turns to walk away.

He ignores the comments his friends make about Deku's inability to talk back. They don't matter in the end. What _did _matter was that the awful churn of his gut that told him to stay away from Deku would finally be sated, and the stupid crush he's been harboring for two years would finally disappear into nothingness. He'd come out on top of Yuuei and become the Number One Hero— _that _was the plan, and nothing was going to change it.

_Especially _that shitty fucking _Deku._

Before he can think better of it, he decides to add some salt to Deku's already exposed wounds for good measure: "You wanna be a hero so bad? I've got a time saving idea for you. If you think you'll have a quirk in your next life, go take a swan dive off the roof!"

But the second the words leave his mouth he regrets saying them—the look Deku gives him in return feels like the stake through his heart that he knows he deserves.

Katsuki lights up a few explosions in his palm to deter Deku from saying anything more, smothering up any sign of his regret with intimidation instead. He just wants this conversation to be over. He doesn't want to think more about how much this mistake could've cost him if Deku didn't have such strong perseverance—one of the many, many things he detests about the other.

Katsuki leaves without another word, lackeys following behind him in silence. He knows they're going to speak up about what he said at some point—they, too, knew he went too far. He doesn't look forward to being told shit he already knew.

The warmth of the mid-afternoon sun feels nice against skin, restoring some of the color that had left him after his talk with Deku. It's actually quite beautiful weather outside, perfect for taking a run through the woods near his house—but that held the risk of running into Deku, which he didn't want at all. _That _quota's already been filled for the day.

"Hey Bakugou, wanna hit up the arcade? I heard they just got in a new shooter game." One of his followers asks, laughter from some stupid joke the other background character still echoing in each word he says.

If there _was _a new game like that there, then Deku would be heading there as well. The nerd never could resist them, despite being horribly bad at aiming.

_Why _does he still remember that about him? It's not like Deku means anything more to him than gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe, despite what the trill of his heart says.

Katsuki clenches his fists, denting his soda can with his fingerprints, but refuses to stop walking with his head held high. He was better than Deku in every possible way. He shouldn't _have _to go out of his way to avoid the nerd like this—Deku should've been cowering in fear from him years ago. The twerp should've ran from him with his tail between his legs.

"I'm gonna go home and train. Yuuei's entrance exam isn't that far away." Katsuki finally answers with grit teeth.

The group walks another block in silence before the other follower of his speaks up.

"You went too far today. I mean, you _are _childhood friends."

And there it is: the exact conversation he was dreading. He doesn't need them to tell him what he already knows.

"Whatever. It's that nerd's fault for riling me up anyway." Katsuki spits, crushing the can in his palm and blowing it to smithereens. He eyes a bottle of some disgusting sludge on the floor of the alley and punts it as hard as he can. It lands with a clatter between the wall of a store and a dumpster.

"Seeing him so full of childhood dreams like when we were kids...it just pisses me off."

Katsuki gets a whiff of cigarette smoke and turns around to glare at whichever of his dumbass followers decided to smoke around him. "I thought I told you to stop smoking! If you get caught, it'll go on my record."

The lackeys point wordlessly to something behind him, and Katsuki grits his teeth before turning around to see what had their panties so twisted.

A large, gelatinous _villain _was eyeing him like a piece of meat. Katsuki swallows down the lump in his throat, palms crackling with the first snaps of explosions as he readies himself for a fight. His followers turn tail and leave like the weak background characters they are to go get some Pros.

Unnecessary, in his opinion: he already had the makings of a hero, and the best of the best showed promise early on. Now was his chance to make his name.

"A body with a good quirk." The villain says, eyes narrowing. "You'll make a good meat suit."

Before Katsuki can even get off the first full explosion, his whole body is surrounded by the gelatinous body of his attacker. It wraps his hands first, obviously to prevent the use of his quirk, but Katsuki wasn't stupid.

He unleashes small bursts of explosions, intending to hurt the villain from the inside out, but his barrage does no damage whatsoever. The villains body is entirely liquid throughout, except for its eyes.

If he could just manage to free a hand to jab it in the fucker's face—

The villain enwraps more of Katsuki's body in its own. It forces Katsuki's lips open and shoves itself down his throat.

Katsuki struggles to breath as the sludge fills his mouth and trickles down to his lungs. He claws at the disgusting villain's body, trying to get whatever leverage he can to throw the fucker off him. Finding none, he lets out a fairly sizeable explosion dangerously close to his face from his left palm.

"You're a strong one, aren't you?" The villain chortles, pushing into his throat harder and faster.

Katsuki chokes around the offending liquid as his body lurches, gag reflex forcefully trying to push out what was forcing its way in. His chest aches and burns more than any harsh training session could push his scarred lungs.

Despite the fuzziness of the edges of his vision and the horrible pain of his throat, he releases another assault on the villain.

He _won't _let this fucker get the best of him. He _won't._

Katsuki struggles against the thick binds of the liquid encompassing his whole body, wincing as terrified screams of shoppers all around him grate on his eardrums like a horror movie soundtrack. What he hates the most about it though, is the fact that the villain was actively using whatever assault Katsuki unleashed against it back at the crowds. It was destroying the shopping district with ease.

Katsuki uses the last of his breath to struggle against his confines once final time, snarling as the sludge pulls and rips at his lips. He manages to fight it enough to get a short gasp of air, barely managing to look out at the horrified crowd of people gathered behind police lines before his eyelids become too heavy to keep open.

_This is it, _he thinks. _To die by the hands of some two-bit villain. How pathetic._

"Kacchan!"

Katsuki's eyes fly open again after he hears the familiar yell of his name. He watches in fury, unable to take his gaze off the nuisance, as Deku runs towards him without a thought towards his own safety.

He's beyond angry—he doesn't need saving, _especially _from this quirkless loser—but what he's most angry over is the twist of his gut as the wretched crush he harbors for the idiot strangles his heart like thorned vines.

Deku launches his backpack at the villain as a distraction, managing to knock the fucker in the eye with all the hero fanboy bullshit he kept stuffed in that yellow sack. It's enough of a surprise that the villain's grip on his throat loosens enough for him to suck in lungfuls of air through coughs.

"What are you _doing, _shit nerd?!" He hisses in anger and frustration.

"I-I don't know! My feet started moving on their own!" Deku cries back, uselessly clawing at the sludge that keeps melting beneath his fingertips. He looks down at Katsuki with wide, frantic eyes filled to the brim with tears—it's a look that he never wants to see on the nerd's face again.

"You—You looked like you needed saving."

And that was the final nail in his coffin. The absolute thing he hated most about Deku was shoved right in face—that gut feeling that Katsuki always had about the nerd he'd kicked down and shoved into the furthest corners of his mind, yet always lingered on the edge of his thoughts whenever he saw the other:

Deku always had the true makings of a hero.

No matter how much Katsuki denied it to his face, told him to be realistic, kicked him, punched him, screamed in his face—the truth was right here. Deku was a natural hero, despite having no quirk or muscle mass to speak of. _He_was the knight in shining armor, not the damsel in distress like Katsuki's heart always wanted it to be.

Katsuki closes his eyes so hard it hurts—tears threaten to spill in a pathetic mirror of Deku's own. He can't let them fall, no matter what—so he doesn't open his eyes when he hears All Might's voice, doesn't open his eyes when his arm is grabbed roughly and he's dragged out of the sludge villain by force, doesn't open his eyes when he hears the yell of Detroit Smash as wind rushes past his face.

Only after the crowd starts cheering and the pros on scene start asking if he's okay does he open them again. He dodges all questions asked and grits his teeth at all the praise given to him.

For once, he knows he doesn't fucking _deserve _the praise—but he sure as hell isn't going to stick his neck out for the quirkless nobody. Not when he already felt like he was kicked in the gut twice today.

But he wasn't going to let the fucker go off without giving him a piece of his mind, that's for damn sure.

"Hey, Deku!" Katsuki yells, hands clenching and unclenching before him as he tries to piece together exactly what he wants to say. It's hard—all of his thoughts are muddled with anger and rage and, worst of all, _hurt._

In the end, he lets the familiar burn of his ire take control.

"I never asked you to save me! As if you could. I could've beaten him myself!" Katsuki growls through grit teeth, body shaking as he physically restrains himself from laying a hand on the other. "How _dare _a quirkless failure like you pity me. Don't you _dare _mock me."

He shoves his smoking palms into his pockets and leaves without another word before things could get violent. He doesn't want to hear any more of Deku's pleas that he wasn't pitying him, that he genuinely _cared _about him—too much has happened today for him to broach the idea of that being a reality.

Instead, Katsuki goes home and locks himself in his room without a word to his parents. Sleep doesn't come to him as he silently releases the tears from earlier into his bunched up knees, lungs burning.


	4. orange lily

Katsuki goes out of his way to avoid Deku after that day. Not that he feels like he owes the twerp some respect or anything like that—he just hasn't had the patience to deal with Deku's insistent hero worship bullshit on top of all the intense training and studying he was doing to assure his spot at Yuuei.

He didn't spare the quirkless nobody another thought until the day of the entrance exam came, when he was forced to watch the idiot stutter and wave his arms frantically in some half-witted attempt deflecting any of Katsuki's blasts.

He rolls his eyes internally at the thought that he'd be so careless as to waste some of his firepower on Deku's face when he needed every last ounce of his energy to show off to the judging panel and score the extra points that he rightfully deserves. He keeps walking past Deku without another word.

"Isn't that Bakugou Katsuki? The one that got caught up in that sludge villain incident?"

Katsuki grits his teeth, fighting the urge to crack some explosions in his palm and yell at the stupid nobodies about minding their own business—instead, he continues walking through the halls of Yuuei until he manages to find his seat in the large auditorium.

Katsuki silently curses whatever deity was watching that apparently liked fucking with him when the green haired nuisance ends up taking the seat next to him thanks to the stupid seating chart that arranged them by school. He does his best to listen to the presentation of how the entrance exam will work, but any thoughts of potential battle strategies are dashed out of his head the second they arrive because of the annoying, hero-worshipping babble coming out of Deku's mouth.

"Shut up." Katsuki growls at the nerd, gaze flickering over to his left for just a second so Deku would know who he was talking to before returning to the large overhead screen behind Present Mic.

"In ten minutes, you'll all head out to your assigned battle ground for the test!" Present Mic announces, prompting everyone to look down at the cards handed to them when they'd originally arrived.

"So, in other words, they won't let you work with your friends, huh?" Katsuki says as he picks up his card, glancing at his location quickly before flicking his gaze over to Deku's card to see if they were in the same area.

"Y-You're right." Deku stammers in agreement, shifting closer to Katsuki so he could get a glance at his card. "Even though our examinee numbers are consecutive, we're assigned to different battlegrounds."

"Damn. Now I can't crush you." He says flatly, not really meaning a word of it. In all honesty, he was glad Deku wasn't in the same testing ground as him. He needs absolute focus if he wants to blow this shit out of the water, and if Deku was there the nerd would just find some way to fuck it up for him as per usual.

Deku leans away from him, tensing up with anxiety as per fucking usual. Katsuki watches in mild interest as the rest of the rules of the exam get explained, holding back a snort as a kid a few rows ahead of them loudly scolds Deku for his earlier annoying mumbling.

Five minutes later, he finds himself standing outfront of the battleground in wait of the announcement the test has begun. Katsuki flexes his fingers, rolling his neck to work all the cricks out of it with a smirk.

Game on. 

* * *

Katsuki doesn't let up on his training after the entrance exam is completed. He knows for a fact that he's scored high on both the written exam and the practical—meaning anxiety over whether or not he got in was the furthest thing from his mind. He knew he was going to get in, and always had.

Katsuki has much better things to do with his time than mope around and wait for his acceptance letter. If he wants to be the best hero ever, he has to keep practicing—his quirk isn't that well suited for rescue operations, but a hero needs to be well rounded. At some point, he'll have to ask his dad to rig up a rescue scenario for him to practice refined detonation with.

A few days after the expected acceptance letter from Yuuei comes in, Katsuki has his feet resting atop his desk, casually lounged back in his chair with a smirk as the whispered words of praise from his classmates over his achievement of being the top scoring student on the entrance exam get tossed around. He cracks an eye open when their sensei clears his throat.

"Bakugou and Midoriya, the principal would like to see you."

Katsuki opens both eyes now and furrows his brow, sitting up in confusion.

Why would the principal want to see both of them? They haven't so much as _looked _at each other for the past ten months. What could he _possibly _have in common with Deku that would require both of their presences in the front office?

Katsuki leaves the class with his hands thrust in his pockets, head down to stare at the linoleum of the floor as he thinks. Deku walks behind him in a very unusual silence that only further serves to pique his curiosity and confusion. He wants to slam the other into the nearby lockers and demand to know what was up with him, but something in his gut tells him his question is about to be answered anyway.

The front office worker greets them with a warm smile as she ushers them into the back office, where their principal appears to be reading over some sort of letter—from Yuuei, no less.

Katsuki feels his stomach drop out as dread over what could possibly connect him to the nerd for this meeting is.

But that was impossible, wasn't it? Deku was quirkless—there's no _way _he could've passed that exam.

"Thank you for joining me, boys!" The principal says, setting aside the letter in hands. He smiles bright and wide at them.

Katsuki struggles to keep explosions from crackling in his palms. This _can't _be happening. It _wasn't possible._

"I can't believe we have two students matriculating into Yuuei High. Especially you, Midoriya. It's a miracle!"

No. No, that wasn't possible. _It wasn't. _There's no _fucking _way someone quirkless could pass that entrance exam—unless the fucker used some kind of dirty tricks.

That had to be it then. He had to have blackmailed the principal, or held a teacher at gunpoint, or _hell _even _slept _his way in.

Katsuki balls his hands into tight, shaking fists as he reigns back his anger. His dream has been shot to hell because this runt couldn't stop obsessing over being a hero so _fucking _much that he had to go do something dishonorable and dirty to get in.

Does Deku _really _hate him that much that he'd do that to him? Fine, then. If Deku was going to be at Yuuei, he was going to pummel him into the ground every step of the way. He was going to be ten times—no, _a hundred _times better than that twerp could ever _dream _to be. He was going to show him just what it meant to declare such a war on Bakugou Katsuki.

The principal dismisses them back to class, but Katsuki has different plans. He snatches Deku's wrist that _somehow _doesn't feel as tiny and meek as it used to in his grasp and drags the nerd back behind the school. Deku struggles, stuttering and fumbling through different excuses and attempts to _just talk, _but Katsuki doesn't want to "just talk". He wants to know exactly what the _fuck _was going on, and he wants to know _right fucking now._

"What dirty tricks did you use to get in, huh?" Katsuki fumes, shoving Deku as hard as he can into the concrete wall. He's snarling at this point, barely able to restrain his ire as he grips the collar of Deku's uniform and shakes the nerd so hard it's _bound _to give him a lasting migraine after he was through with him. "The first student from his school to go to Yuuei. My future plan has already been torn to pieces. I told you to go somewhere else!"

A firm hand on his wrist halts the rest of the rant resting on the tip of his tongue.

"Kacchan." Deku says through tears, looking up to meet Katsuki's furious snarl with a determination. "Someone told me _"you can become a hero"— _that it was because of my own effort. Th-That's why—I'm going!"

Katsuki's eyes widen ever so slightly in surprise. Someone _actually _told this fuck up he could be a hero? Who in their goddamn _mind _would support Deku's absurd and dangerous delusion?!

Katsuki narrows his eyes again, to angry to even continue this conversation lest he destroy the wall behind the nerd with the explosions threatening to burst from his palms at any minute. He drops Deku with one last slam into the wall before taking his leave.

He growls as he nearly explodes the front door off its hinges, too upset to care about returning to class at this point. Everything's been shot to hell for him in the span of less than half an hour. His heart feels like it's tearing itself apart with conflicting emotions—the majority of him is angry and upset that he has to put up with his dreams being crushed and having to put up with Deku for another three years; yet a very small but loud portion of his heart, the part that doesn't tell him to run the other way when he sees the nerd, sings with a nervous happiness that his chances of having Deku as his own has increased.

Katsuki punts a rock on the side of the road as hard as he can.

He wants to crush that small portion of himself that yearns to have Deku by his side—to have Deku look up to him the way he does All Might. He hates himself for even remotely feeling such disgusting, sappy emotions for such a weak _nobody._

What the fuck did he ever do to deserve this?


End file.
